Scenic Painting Tips

If the surface to be painted is plasticated: 

1. wipe with methalated spirits 

2. base coat with a primer 

When painting a base coat:

1. make sure all brush marks and lumps are gone. 

2.Brush paint into a wood surface evenly with not too much paint

Blending:

Darker colour first then lighter colour to blend

Pounce:

1. Tracing paper with holes poked in to trace the lines

2. Poke holes through the back, rub the front with charcoal

Residential Schools and Eugenics in Alberta

Genomes and sterilization.

Eugenics in Alberta, from 1929 to 1972: "Like begets like," they said. 

He had been abandoned by his Cree mother at age 7, so the government put him in the "training School" in Red Deer, Alberta. Hospital whites haunt him to this day. The smell of disinfectant bccame so familiar that later in life, it was comforting. It was around his 16th birthday that a surgeon made two deep incisions and severed his vas deferens. His 20 years of confinement was followed by many years trying to overcome the past. 

In 1972, medical and genetic theories were deemed questionable; fundamental human rights were in violation.

Laughing Cousins in Timbuktu

I have never been fond of cold showers, even in hot countries...but after two days on the dusty desert piste of Mali’s Dogon country I was ready for a cold wash. The red sandy mud permiated my clothes and nostrils, my tummy was acting up, and the malaria medication was giving me vivid nightmares. It had been a bone rattling experience, riding in a cat cat (4X4 truck) across the desert Sahel. Great plains with soaring ridges topped by ancient caves, a surreal landscape more spectacular than any Grand Canyon. Mali is the largest country in West Africa, and the great Sahara desert covers more than half of its landmass. I was headed for Timbuktu, a place my mother had always threatened to send me if I was naughty or didn’t eat my peas.

I had spent several days visiting Dogon villages, climbing up steep rock inclines to the ancient Tellem caves, now inhabited by the Dogon. I felt like a novice anthropologist. Indigenous people had lived in these caves for centuries and continue to do so, even though the village wells are a kilometre away on the plateau below. There is no electricity. Just working families living their lives, women pounding millet cereal, children carrying water, men working in the fields and seniors sitting in small groups greeting visitors.

All live harmoniously in villages often shared with other tribes they call their “laughing cousins.” The concept of “laughing cousins” really tells the story of Mali and how the tribes complement each other. The Bozo people are the fishermen; the Fulani look after the cattle; the Dogon are the farmers; the Bella people manufacture straw mats; and the Songhay have a proud, fearless heritage of empire building. Then there are the nomadic Tuareg, who constantly move in caravans across the Sahara, loading up their camels with salt slabs from the Taoudenni Salt Mine and taking them on a long trek across the Sahara, following the stars to Timbuktu where they are sold, loaded on to donkeys or boats headed down the Niger River.

On this day, after the cold shower and traditional breakfast of baguette and cream cheese (the Malians have been heavily influenced by French culture) I was headed for more villages. I drove past endless fields of millet, onions and cotton then back on to dry dirt-track road that seemed to go on forever. There were few vehicles on the road but plenty of people working the fields dressed in bright colours.

At noon I arrived at a small mud village with its very own mud mosque . Greeted by dozens of the village children I then went to visit the schoolhouse and saw 200 kids stuffed into a small, hot classroom, all of them behaving so well and listening attentively to the teacher. I thought about my children and how we would complain if there were more than 30 students in their classroom.

One little boy was limping with a bandage tied loosely around his foot. A village elder showed us his wound, a big hole in the bottom of his foot that looked like it was turning green. While visiting this richly cultural nation, it’s easy to forget that it is one of the poorest countries in the world, until you reach the remote villages. I dug out some antiseptic cream and fresh bandages for the boy from the first-aid kit in the back of the cat cat. I felt so useless. There was no medical clinic nearby. Most people couldn’t afford medicine. Many had resorted to buying cheap, expired pharmaceuticals from stalls in the local markets. Self-medicating was common, as was death from poisoning.

Published in "Special Glasses Magazine" 2007

"I Have Aids!" by Sky Gilbert- April 09

Ryan Kelly and Gavin Crawford in "I have Aids" by Sky Gilbert

Photo: Ryan Kelly as "Nurse Katey"...the Cheery Sock Puppet

Here is a photos from a recent production at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I designed the costumes. The play was successful in causing controversy and public discussion.

Secular Mass in Papua New Guinea

BY SHEREE TAMS

Great gobs of red spit were hitting the ground like a hail storm. the unemployed, gamblers, rascals, spirited bus drivers, wayward teenagers, airport customs officials - crowded into an open field, united by their orange teeth, they came to socialize, gamble, gossip, play darts...but most of all to spit.

Here at Mount Hagan’s city limits, our modern fuel efficient Japanese minibus with wooden benches, four-wheel drive and the local version of fuzzy dice was greeted by a hand painted 20-foot billboard, proclaiming in vibrant, garish colours that there would be “NO CHEWING BEETLENUT BEYOND THIS POINT. “ Red-soaked earth preceded the sign, where the large crowd had gathered, and brown dirt continued beyond. The line was drawn, marking a bloody battleground strew with broken husks. It was a men’s club, a vice for the common man. The only women present were serving, cleaning and gathering. Their posture was unobtrusive and humbled.

As we continued towards town away from the airport and the field of spit, we discovered a street lined with churches - huts with crosses, not just one or two, but too many to count. This was salvation’s ground zero. There were more missions than shops, but the streets were deserted. Given that secular mass was being held at the the suburban spitting ground at the edge of town.

EXCERPTED FROM THE APRIL/MAY ISSUE OF OUTPOST MAGAZINE 2001 

Safari up the Rajang

BY SHEREE TAMS

Not long after reading about an eco safari camp that calls itself “NOT THE HILTON” we headed deep into bush. Less than an hour’s flight from Kota Kinabalu we were in Sandikan and from there it was two hours by road to a small village jetty, then another hour by motorized longboat. Part way down the Kinabatang the palm plantations flanking both sides of the riverbank stopped abruptly and tropical rainforest began. When we finally hit dry land, it was a long slog through dense forest before we arrived.

Uncle Tan’s Safari Camp was situated in the Kinabatang Valley, in the province of Sabah in Borneo, near an old river bed among vivid orange ox-bow lakes. the camp’s raised huts were completely open with no doors or windows, only a mosquito net and  mattress. Communal toilets were “biological,” semi-private holes in the ground with a bucket of rain water nearby for flushing. The shower was the same.

Lunch was served to the serenades of Borneo gibbons making “hootie” noises, and jumbo-sized bees chased guests into a frenzy and lunches went flying. Leftovers were scraped into a central fire pit, which doubled as a feeding trough for a family of wild boars and monitor lizards, who apart from looking like a scene from Jurassic Park, didn’t seem to mind each others company.

Ami, our guide would sniff the air often then follow the smell to a sighting. The first morning he led us to an adult orangutan and her baby. We stood silently as it defecated in the canopy over our heads. Later Ami’s nose found a family of proboscis monkeys, gibbons, macaques and wild elephant tracks.

From the rainforests of Borneo to the slick shopping malls and Petrona Towers of Kuala Lumpur, the most amazing thing about Malaysia is that one day you are climbing Mount Kinabalu and the next you’re singing karoke on a boat bound for an Iban longhouse. Days later, on our way to one such longhouse, the onboard entertainment including Exit Wounds starring Steven Seagal with Chinese subtitles followed by the three hours of WWE Wrestling. Sailing out into the South China sea, and then deep into the tributaries of the Rajang, while a well-worn Karoke machine kept people occupied on deck two. The social director pulled out a tatty yellow binder of song choices in Malay, Chinese, Iban or English. Selections include everything from “Help” by the Beatles, to the ”The Green Green Grass of Home” by Tom Jones. Meanwhile outside on the river, rogue logs float by, and they seem to be moving to the beat of the music. 

PUBLISHED IN OUTPOST MAGAZINE GLOBAL TRAVEL GUIDE • 2003